On the Foundations of Arithmetic in Euclid

On the Foundations of Arithmetic in Euclid David Pierce Draft of January , Mathematics Department Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul http://mat.msgsu.edu.tr/~dpierce/ Summary The geometry presented in the thirteen books of Euclid’s Elements is founded on five postulates; but the arithmetic in Books vii, viii, and ix makes no explicit use of postulates. Nonetheless, Euclid proves rigorously the commutativity of multiplication in any ordered ring whose positive elements are well ordered: such is one conclusion of this monograph, worked out in the third and last chapter. The various contents of the chapters and their sections might be summarized as follows. The study of Euclid is an instance of doing history. As such, the study can both benefit from, and illustrate, the philosophy of history developed by R. G. Collingwood in several of his books. .. Studying the Elements is like studying an ancient building, such as the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul: it is a kind of archeology. Archeology is in turn a kind of history. Historical inference actually resembles mathematical inference; but the way to understand this is by actually doing history and mathematics—which we do by studying Euclid. .. The present study of Euclid is motivated by questions such as: Can students today learn number theory from Euclid? Does Euclid cor- rectly prove such results as the commutativity of multiplication, and “Euclid’s Lemma”? .. We cannot decide whether a particular statement or argument of Euclid is correct or incorrect without first understanding what it means. The meaning is not always obvious. .. In studying Euclid, we have to re-enact his thoughts, as best we can. .. In reading Euclid (or any philosopher), we cannot just say that he is wrong (if we think he is), without also offering a correction that (in our best judgment) he can agree with. Mathematicians used to learn mathematics from Euclid. Since this Summary no longer happens, we may be better able now to understand Euclid prop- erly. Nonetheless, some students do still learn mathematics from Euclid. Among those students are undergraduates in my own mathematics department in Istanbul: reading with them brings out certain features of Euclid. .. Dedekind did not learn his construction of the real numbers from Euclid. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he understood Euclid well enough to see that what he was doing was different. .. Looking back at Euclid’s Greek (for the sake of translating this into Turkish) brings out some misleading features of the standard En- glish translation by Heath. Heath aids the reader by typographical means; but this may cause us to think wrongly that Euclid’s propositions are like modern theorems. Euclid may have established a pattern for modern mathematical exposition; but this does not mean he is obliged to follow it. .. Contrary to modern mathematical practice, Euclid’s equality is not sameness or identity. Thinking about what equality really means, one can see that Euclid’s Proposition i., the “Side Angle Side” theorem of triangle congruence, is a real theorem. .. According to Hilbert, Euclid’s Fourth Postulate, the equality of all right angles, is really a theorem. Examining Hilbert’s proof of this theorem shows how different is his way of thinking of geometry from Euclid’s. We turn to Book vii of Euclid’s Elements and to the specific investigation of questions raised earlier. .. The definition of unity may well be a late addition to this book. .. By definition, if a number is of a second number the same part or parts that a third number is of a fourth, then the four numbers are proportional. Whatever else it means, a proportion is not an equation of ratios, but an identification of them. .. Euclid’s numbers are finite nonempty sets. Euclid distinguishes be- tween dividing numbers into parts and measuring numbers by numbers. It turns out that for infinite sets, being divisible into two equipollent subsets is logically stronger than being measurable by a two-element set. .. If a number is parts of a number, this does not mean that the one number is a fraction of the other. .. When the numbers in Euclid’s diagrams appear as line segments, it is useful to think of these as lyre strings. The ancient musical treatise called Sectio Canonis suggests a way of thinking about numerical ratios that is useful for understanding the Elements. .. Lying behind the notion of a ratio is the alternating subtraction or anthyphaeresis used in the Euclidean Algorithm. .. Proposition , that the less number is either part or parts of the greater, should be understood as an explanation of what being the same parts means in the definition of proportion: it means that application of the Euclidean Algorithm requires the same pattern of alternating subtractions in either case. .. With this understanding, the proof of the commutativity of multiplication, Proposition , unfolds logically. .. So does the proof of “Euclid’s Lemma,” Proposition . .. The last three propositions of Book vii may be a late addition. In any case, they are written by somebody who is starting to think of mathematics as symbol-manipulation. Contents Summary Philosophy of History . Archeology .......................... . Questions ........................... . Evidence............................ . Re-enactment......................... . Science............................. Euclid in History . DedekindandHilbert . . FromacourseofEuclid . . Equality............................ . Rightangles.......................... Euclid’s Foundations of Arithmetic . Unity ............................. . Proportion .......................... . Sets .............................. . Parts.............................. . Music ............................. . The Euclidean Algorithm . . PartorParts ......................... . Multiplication......................... . Euclid’sLemma........................ . Symbolic mathematics . List of Figures . Proposition i. ........................ . Proposition i. ........................ . Proposition i......................... . Proposition i......................... . Proposition i.asEucliddoesit . . Proposition i. ........................ . Proposition i. ........................ . Postulate .......................... . Multiplication of points . . Multiplication of straight lines . . Lyrestrings .......................... . Proposition vii. ....................... . Proposition vii. ....................... . Proposition i. ........................ Philosophy of History . Archeology We are going to investigate foundational aspects of Euclid’s arithmetic, as presented in Books vii, viii, and ix of the thirteen books of the Elements. Our investigation might be called archeology, though it will require no actual digging. We want to know something about the Elements, and in particular its theory of numbers; however, we have no first-hand testimony about what Euclid was doing, or trying to do. We just have the Elements itself. As for the earlier tradition that Euclid came out of, we have only traces of it. We have later works about Euclid, especially Proclus’s Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements. We shall make some use of this commentary, but it was written centuries after the Elements. Euclid himself does not provide testimony about what he is doing; he just does it. If proper history requires such testimony, then we cannot make an historical study of Euclid’s arithmetic. We can still make an archeological study. We can read the Elements itself, for evidence of what Euclid was trying to do there. In the same way, one might read the Constantinopolitan Church of St Sophia, for evidence of the aims of its master builders, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus: for, the basilica itself can still be visited in Istanbul. Concerning this basilica, called the Hagia Sophia or Ayasofya, we do also have some written testimony. Procopius saw the church constructed in the sixth century, at the command of Emperor Justinian, after an A Wikipedia article requires testimony in a broader sense. Because of the rule of No Original Research, a Wikipedia article about a book must be based on what other people have said about the book. . Archeology earlier church had been destroyed in the so-called Nika Insurrection. Jus- tinian spared no expense to build a new church, says Procopius, so finely shaped, that if anyone had enquired of the Christians before the burning if it would be their wish that the church should be destroyed and one like this should take its place, shewing them some sort of model of the building we now see, it seems to me they would have prayed that they might see their church destroyed forthwith, in order that the building might be converted to its present form. [, I.i., p. ] We might infer that Anthemius and Isidore did actually show Justinian a model of the basilica that they planned to build. Like this model, or like the old church that the new Hagia Sophia would replace, some kind of mathematics came before the Elements as we have it now; but we have only hints (as in Plato’s Meno) of what this was like. About the construction of the Hagia Sophia itself, from Procopius we know it was not with money alone that the Emperor built it, but also with labour of the mind and with the other powers of the soul, as I shall straightway show. One of the arches which I just now mentioned (lôri the master-builders call them), the one which stands towards the east, had already been built up from either side, but it had not yet been wholly

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